


try to remember the kind of september (when life was slow and oh so mellow)

by okayantigone



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alcoholism, Author plays fast and loose with the MCU timeline, Child Abuse, Civil War Team Iron Man, Depression, Elders of the Universe – Freeform, F/M, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – PTSD, Thanos' A+ parenting, The Black Order - Freeform, Time Travel Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Trauma Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-07-10 17:19:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15953966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone
Summary: Pepper tries to tell herself that this is the only way. That realistically, Tony was never going to get better. It doesn't make it any easier.After Siberia, Tony wakes up alone in a hospital bed, and everything is wrong, but he doesn't have time to grieve - the Mad Titan is coming, and he is Earth's first line of defense.





	1. pepper//BEFORE

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be an Extremely AU starting with the end of Captain America: Civil War. Since it's a time travel fic, a lot of the timeline will feel wonky, and it will be a bit clunky, transition wise, at least the first few chapters. 
> 
> For now the plan is to keep the fic focused within the events post-time travel, and slowly reveal what prompted the use of the Time Stone, but we will see. 
> 
> I don't have any sort of posting schedule, since I'm writing as I go, but I really hope you guys will stick around and enjoy~

“He will never forgive us for this,” Pepper says quietly, her voice choked up. Tears slide down her face, unbidden, because even now the idea of letting Tony down, of betraying him like this – it makes her sick. 

“He won’t remember,” Stephen says, confidently. He can’t. He shouldn’t. 

“Are you sure?” Pepper asks. She and Stephen – the people who love Tony most in this world – and Rhodey, and Peter – the people Tony trusts most in this world. Stephen clenches his scarred hands over the Time Stone. 

“Yes,” he says, resolute. “Yes, I am.” 

“Okay,” Pepper says softly. “I will never forgive myself for this,” she amends, after a moment. 

The others’ silence echoes her thoughts, because what they’re about to do to Tony… it can’t be undone. And he may not remember it, but they will. They will always know what they have done to him. 

But she rests her small hands over Stephen’s, and prepares to rip Tony’s heart out again, for the greater good. She closes her eyes. She wants to console herself. She likes to imagine that this is what Tony would have wanted. Her Tony. Not this… not this other, foreign, terrifying person he had become, but the Tony she knows well. He would want his. The man who was ready to fly a nuke into outer space and die… he would have wanted this. For sure. 

Rhodey places a hand over hers. Peter’s hand is shaking and small when it joins them. There is no going back from this betrayal. There is nothing that will fix what they are going to, except, maybe this will fix everything. 

When she next opens her eyes, she is sitting in her office in Stark Tower, and FRIDAY is frantically informing her that she's lost contact with the suit.


	2. tony// AFTER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony, in the aftermath of waking up in the hospital, attempting to do some form of damage control.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am going to keep the chapters relatively short, because this way I can update more frequently (hopefully).  
> I hope you guys will enjoy this and stick around to figure out what the fuck Pepper and the others did :D

The Avengers Civil War. That’s what the media called it. Civil War sounded so big, so enormous for what had actually happened, and yet it didn’t sound nearly big enough for the marks it had left. 

Now Tony had a shield-shaped scar in his chest, and an Avengers-shaped hole in his life, a distraught and anxiety-ridden teenager, a crippled best friend, a stone-faced, unforgiving Pepper –

He tallied what he had, and defined the presences in his life by the absences, and he did not break even, wasn’t anywhere even close to breaking even. But Tony Stark was a businessman first and foremost, so he had to start somewhere, and somewhere began at the intersection of performative forgiveness and cutting his losses. 

Hollow cheeked, hollow-eyed and alone, he meets President Ellis in the Oval Office in one of his Armani suits, his Italian leather shoes gleaming dully. The lights are dimmed – he’s still not great with lights, he’s still not great with a lot of things. He shakes the President’s hand with his good hand, the left arm still in a cast, fingers twitching minutely. Nerve damage from the tower of cars Wanda collapsed on him, from the frostbite that had started setting in before the Stark Industries Emergency Unit Pepper dispatched had found him – 

But he shakes President Ellis’ hand and smiles, hollow and forced, baring his teeth. 

“You know Ross needs to step down,” he says, without preamble. 

Howard had enjoyed playing the game of running this country, being suave and charming, speaking in riddles. This wasn’t Tony. Tony was tired. Tony had had enough. Tony had watched Bucky barnes smash in Howard’s charming face, and now he stood in front of the most powerful man in the world, and he was not afraid. 

“I know,” Ellis says, which in of itself is surprising, because no one ever just agrees with Tony, no one – 

Except yeah. Yeah, they do. People agree with Tony. People like Tony. It’s just the Avengers that – No. He won’t think this, because that way lies madness. Madness is not something Tony wants to think about right now. 

He and the President are on the same page. For now that should be enough. The word “pardon” is never spoken between them, but they are in agreement all the same. If the Republicans want any chance of reelection next term, they can’t have the stain of announcing that Captain America is a war criminal on their administration. 

He leaves his meeting smiling for the cameras. Reminds everyone that Tony Stark is back in the fucking game. No. That Tony Stark never left the fucking game. Whatever happened – and a lot has happened – was a temporary vacation from his own mind, a lapse in judgment, a lapse in sanity, a foolish, stupid dream that he was worthy of something more, but he knows better now. Steve beat it into him like Howard beat it into him. He knows better. Has always known better. 

These people had never been his friends. But Thanos is coming, and he can’t afford to be picky and choosy, can’t afford to play fast and loose with Earth’s defense, and maybe, when it’s all over, maybe then he can speak his mind, maybe then he can force himself to look at them again and ask the one question that had been plaguing him since he woke up in that hospital room breathing through a ventilator with the horrifying realization that that thing is back in his chest. 

How could you do that to me? 

Maybe he’ll ask them after. When they’ve won. When Earth is safe. When the universe is safe. Maybe they’ll even look him in the eye and answer. 

As it happens more often than not, these days, he loses the time between one blink and the next, from sitting in the car while Happy drives, to finding himself sat in May Parker’s kitchen. 

It’s a funny expression, that. Losing time. How does one manage to lose time? Where does the time go? Time is time. It’s always right where you left it. It happens, regardless of wether you’re there for it or not. Maybe it’s not time he loses, but himself. 

His next blink finds him back in the car. He has no idea what he and May talked about. He isn’t sure he wants to know what he and May talked about. Maybe the memory will come to him when he needs it. 

His next blink finds him swallowing his pills at his bathroom counter. God, he used to do so much coke off it back in the day. Now it’s the anti-depressants, the anti-anxiety, the anti-psychotics, the blood pressure pills, the heart pills, the head pills, the vitamin supplements, the liver, the kidney, the sleeping – 

FRIDAY relays to him that Pepper has cancelled their dinner plans again. He assumes that indicates that reestablishing their relationship is in fact not, and has never been on the table in the first place. Why would Pepper have said break, if she meant break-up? Doesn’t she understand that Tony can’t deal with those things? That he doesn’t get those things? Nuances. Expressions. 

Why can’t people just say what they mean? 

He crawls into his thousand-thread sheets, curls up under the down-stuffed duvet and has FRIDAY turn the heat way up. He is tired. He doesn’t remember a time where he wasn’t this tired. 

Well. That’s not quite true. He does. But he can’t think about it. That way lies madness. He closes his eyes. Like every other night, he dreams of dying alone in the cold in Siberia, where no one came to look for him.


	3. stephen// AFTER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen and Rhodey reflect on the moral and ethical implications of the do-over.

It’s not that it’s easier the second time around, because it isn’t. He wakes up in the hospital, and his hands are ruined. This time, he doesn’t lash out, despite the ways in which his heart unfolds in his chest, because for a moment, he had hoped. 

But he can’t risk it. Not for something as selfish as this, because being healed, being whole, for just a moment… it isn’t worth the rest of the horrors he witnessed in that other, terrible timeline. 

Still, he is conscious of himself, because he doesn’t have to do everything exactly how it happened. He doesn’t have to live through it the same way. He can deviate, if only slightly, can ease his consciousness, apologetic in the worst ways, because he never got a chance to say goodbye then and maybe he can’t prevent it a second time, but he sure as hell can try now. 

Change was the whole point of this exercise in futility, after all. 

So Stephen Strange changes. He doesn’t spend his entire life’s fortune on worthless operations, and he doesn’t push Christine away, because it didn’t fix him before, and it isn’t going to fix him now. He remembers keenly the feeling of being fixed. The promise. But his hands shake, and his heart is broken, and he needs to make this count, and he needs to find the worthy in letting Tony down. 

As soon as he is cleared to leave the hospital, he books a flight to Nepal, pounds his barely healed fists on every door, and faces the Ancient One, and when his arms wrap around her, it’s only pure instinct. 

He isn’t sure who is more surprised – him or her, when his arms wrap around her, and he pulls her into his chest, breathing in the scent of tea that always faintly clings to her, and he finally realizes he’s crying when he pulls away, whispering over and over “It’s you, it’s really you.” 

Her hand, small and warm and dry, settles on his trembling wrist, her eyes impossibly wide. 

“Do I know you?” 

He hadn’t done it before, though he wanted to, many times. So he does it now. He breaks, laughing loudly and without care for how it makes him look to her – a madman who has found his way into her sanctum. 

But right now, in this moment, she is alive and he has missed her more than words can say, this kindly ruthless teacher. He’d let her down once. He won’t do it again. 

“Who are you?” she asks again. He manages to stop laughing despite himself, but a smile tugs at his lips nonetheless. Because much as she seemed like it, she doesn’t actually know everything. 

So he tells her. He tells her the whole thing, bloody and visceral as if it happened yesterday, because to him it did happen yesterday, and his body may not carry the scars, but he will never forget, and when he is done, she cups his face. 

Her hands are warm, her thumbs wiping his tears away gently. “You brave, wonderful man,” she tells him gently. “I must have taught you so well. I would have been so proud.” 

He raises his ugly misshapen hand to her wrist and grips it to the best of his stilted ability. “You did,” he whispers. “You really did.” voice choked up with sobs and a kind of desperation he hadn’t realized he was harbouring. He isn’t ready to lose her again, though he knows he must. He knows, and she knows too, that it would be too much of a paradox. She needs to die in this world, as she did in the previous one. 

His hands – that had always been the price. But he hadn’t realized how much failing to save her again would cost. Isn’t sure he’s ready to pay this price too, except that he is. He must. Because he has to make this count.

It would be selfish of him not to, after everything he’s cost Tony in this violent mess of a do-over. 

And his only consolation is that Tony won’t remember it, but Stephen remembers every brutal second, the molten glass of the hourglass, right when the lightning strikes it and turns it to brutal, cascading sand. 

He warns the Ancient One, and he takes the Eye – cursed, stupid trinket that took everything from him twice over, and he goes to Bleaker Street, back to New York, where he can be broken and alone in peace. This timeline’s version of Wong is ready to be his friend too. But Stephen isn’t sure how many losses he can bear, not when he knows, and cannot unknow, cannot unlive… 

He splits his time between Bleaker Street and his penthouse, and offers his consult to the case of Colonel Rhodes, because he took from him too, even though Rhodey was ready for it, even though Rhodey knew what the hell he was signing up for… 

Being able to talk to Rhodey about it makes it easier in some ways, harder in others. 

Easier to talk to someone else who remembers what they did. Since Pepper refuses to see them, since she still can’t learn to live with it. The knowledge tears her apart, as it does them. 

Stephen atones the best way, the only way he knows how, by coaching Rhodey through connecting the neurotransmitters in the braces, working on ways to fuse the prosthetics with his spine, working magic into fixing him, anything at all to soothe the gaping hole that his heart has become. 

He would rather die another hundred thousand deaths by Dormamu’s hand, but he cannot bargain out of this. 

“He’s broken, Stephen,” Rhodey says quietly, coming to see him from Tony’s workshop and report on their progress. “He’s not eating, he’s not sleeping. What St-Rogers did to him…” 

“We knew he was never going to recover,” Stephen says quietly, perhaps a little more coldly than he meant to. Rhodey bristles. He is as familiar with Tony’s depression as he’s ever been. It was his constant companion since college. That, and the drinking, and the anxiety. The constant flinching. He had always been able to read it in the lines of Tony’s brilliantly crafted public smile. 

There had always been a part of Rhodey quietly lying in wait, preparing himself for the inevitable moment when he’d get the call that Tony had finally taken that final, brutal step. 

I should have never come back through the wormhole, Tony had whispered to him furtively. That was right before the surgery. The headlines were still screaming about the Mandarin, and Tony was high off his ass on morphine, Extremis rendering him temporarily indestructible. I would have died a hero. 

You are a hero now, Rhodey had wanted to say. You have always been a hero. 

But then Tony had gone completely under, and when he came to again, the reactor finally out of his chest, and his eyes bright for the first time in years, he had acted like he didn’t remember. Rhodey did. 

He’d kept a closer eye on Tony for a while, but then Ultron happened, and then the Accords happened, and Rhodey had been just so goddamn relieved that Tony’s first reaction after Siberia wasn’t to reach for the bottle after six hard-won months of sobriety, that he hadn’t stopped to ask himself why. 

In hindsight, Tony being okay should have been their first tip-off. Should have sent alarm-bells in everyone who knew him that something was wrong. Just thinking it felt like betrayal. 

That Tony now was so broken should not have felt like reassurance. And yet in every empty bottle Rhodey found in the trash at the penthouse lie a reminder that this was their Tony. 

“Maybe,” Rhodey begins cautiously, and Stephen looks up from where he’s scanning the reports from Rhodey’s physiotherapist. “Maybe it’s time I introduced you guys to each other,” he says awkwardly. “You were… you were good for him. Before.” 

He coughs awkwardly. Stephen studies the earnest lines of his face carefully. He can’t admit it, even to himself, that there’s a reason he hasn’t reached out to Tony himself up to this point. 

It’s not just that Tony must never know or suspect the dangerous timeline swap they are all engaging in. It’s that Stephen can’t look at Tony without remembering the things the other man did in the name of the greater good, his smile painfully genuine, eyes bright and sparkling when he’d said “don’t you see I am trying to fix everything?”

His hands shake, and for the first time it has nothing to do with his injury, but Rhodey is right. Maybe it’s time for Stephen to meet Tony. This Tony, the real Tony, not that awful… version of him. Maybe Stephen can forgive him then. Can understand. 

“Sure,” he says after a silence that stretches all too long, and balls his hands into painful fists. “Sure.”


	4. thanos //BEFORE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> finally, we find out exactly what happened that made pepper, stephen, rhodey and peter use the time stone... or do we?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is a glimpse into the Bad timeline that everyone keeps referencing. 
> 
> CW for suicidal thoughts, injury, death, all the good shit that brought you to my writing in the first place 
> 
> the first half of this chapter is formatted with no capitals, and gradually regular formatting is restored as it moves more from flashback to a fully realized sequence of events. let me know if it works.

siberia is a wasteland of snow and ice, winds diligently sweeping silver scythes over the empty harvest of frost. it reminds him of jotunheim, cold, deserted.

he strides through the violent storm towards the building, which nothing but cool concrete, with maw and proxima following close behind him. it looks like the primitive tombs of the zahoberei planet, where his ever-obedient children piled the bodies high when he was done with his ungrateful work.

it is not a building made for someone of his height and size, but neither is it too constraining, as though whatever it contained once, was too dangerous to be kept in too narrow a cage.

thanos walks through the hallways and steps into the central chamber.

five tanks -an earlier, more rudimentary play on the collector’s own chambers hold silent sleeping guardians. their death is evidenced by the neat holes in each skull. they look at peace in their repose, looking down on the metal casket in the center of the chamber.

thanos had learned the name tony stark, and remembered it well. loki’s failure would not soon be forgiven. the man who singlehandedly wiped half of a galactic force would not be forgotten.

he lay now, in his armor of red and gold, looking up at the cracked ceiling, where snowflakes fell into his hair and beard, and in his long dark lashes. the skidmarks across the floor marked the journey. he must have crawled here to die.

thanos had waited patiently for the opportunity to see this man. the man of iron. the earth’s greatest defender, who didn’t flinch from danger, who would sooner fall down in death than risk his people – thanos owed him an execution in person. he wouldn’t get to deliver one. a part of him was amused. the captain had unknowingly doomed the Avengers, but in doing so, he had saved the earth. even so, thanos did not owe him anything.

he owed anthony stark his respect.

thanos the mad titan e towered over tony stark. humans were such… brittle creatures. without rogers’ enhancements, stark was merely a man in a beautiful armor. and now he was dying in it, like the Midgardian kings of old. thanos would keep vigil. would see this great terrifying man go if none of his friends would do him the honor. stark had been a worthy enemy and a worthy opponent. he had seen too much. had known. had understood.

and he too, had seen the power of the infinity stones and wished to save his people by harnessing it. maybe it was mercy that he would die before he could see the creature vision crumble down.

thanos clasped his hands calmly at his front and waited. beside him, maw and proxima were silent shadows, heads bowed, showing respect for their father, and for his enemy.

stark’s breathing was shallow and wet with blood. his ribcage had been shattered, and thanos had fought enough men to be able to clearly picture the ribs pushing into soft tissue.

“who – “ blood trickled between stark’s lips into his beard. “who’s there?”

his lashes fluttered, but he didn’t have the strength to open his eyes.

maw looked at his father, part question, part alarm. thanos rose a hand to silence him before he could even speak.

“my name is thanos,” he said, voice heavy, filling the echoing quiet of the chamber. “you do not know who i am. five midgardian years ago you came through a portal and wreaked destruction on my armies.”

stark lets out another shuddering breath, which sounds like a wet bloody cough. he doesn’t have much time.

“you.” he whispers. it isn’t accusatory. it’s resigned. he sounds tired. sounds as tired as thanos sometimes feels. the light streaming from the cracked ceiling bounces off the scratched gold of his armor.

he struggles to say more, then finally, in resignation, let his mouth fall shut. silent tears stream down his cheeks and freeze into his hair.

“maw. make it so he can speak,” thanos orders. he specifically does not order stark healed. merely prolongs those final moments. a man of his brilliant mind must be allowed his final words.

maw furrows his brow in concentration, gesturing with his hand, and stark’s breathing lightens considerably.

stark doesn’t open his eyes, when he says quietly. “i wish i had died there.” his voice breaks, and this time it isn’t pain. “i would have been… loved. a hero. worthy.”

“you are worthy now,” thanos says, resolutely. “and when i am finished with Earth… I will make sure they remember your name.”

“that’s a nice sentiment,” stark murmurs, genuinely. softly, curiously, more like a child, than a warrior on his deathbed, he intones, “have you come to finish it then?”

“yes.”

“not much to do, i am afraid.”

“no, indeed,” thanos says, inclining his head.

“why stay?”  
thanos is not a man who frequently tells lies. he has no need of them.

“you are worthy,” he repeats. “you always have been.”

“ah.” understanding dawns on stark’s face, carefully rearranging it. “you came to watch me die, is that it? some weird villain, honor thing?”

“yes.” simplicity. he is not a villain. but he is the villain in stark’s story. there is no need for debate.

“i loved the stars,” stark whispers. “i always wanted… to live among them. i would have been happy – to die there too. but after you, when i look up at the stars… all i feel is afraid.”

before the air on titan filled with debris and dirt, as a boy, thanos too had looked up at the stars. a universe of worlds who were slowly collapsing in on themselves.

“not long now,” maw intones quietly.

stark catches it, because a brittle, broken smile spreads on his blue-tinted face. “good.” he turns his head instinctively to maw’s voice. “do we have a big audience?”

“just me and two of my children,” thanos says.

“oh.” stark’s smiling still, and the tears are streaming down his face at a steady place. “that must be nice. having a child.”

thanos does not answer. what he intends to do to stark’s own creation, the vision, may bleed into his voice.

“will you stay until it’s over?” stark asks, a tremor running through his voice.

“yes,” thanos says, resolutely.

humans, he has seen in his observation, are cruel, ungrateful creatures. they punish, and punish stark, and maybe he is right, maybe he should have died in the cosmos, all that time ago, to be buried with the arm of thanos’ death, as any worthy enemy would be. instead, he has been condemned to die alone, in this cold heartless land, where his friends and family have betrayed him, under the watchful eye of silent harbringers of death. perhaps he thinks he deserves it.

but thanos will witness him, so his death won’t be in vain. he will stay until the end, because it’s no less than what a man like stark deserves. he can only hope, one day, when his own hard, brutal life comes to its rightful end, that whoever lands the final blow will look him in the eye, and wait.

“thank you.” stark’s voice, painfully honest and thick with pain. no one else ever stays. but there is a man he has never even seen, who has tried to kill him, and he lets tony finally rest. “i’m afraid,” he admits.

he wants to get up and fight. he knows this man – creature- whoever – will surely try to take earth again, now that tony is dying and dead. but it’s over. it’s enough. he can’t move. he can only speak because of whatever magic has lifted the pressure from his lungs.

“there’s no need,” thanos says. he takes another step and carefully kneels beside stark’s head. 

“I wanted,” stark whispers, “to be… a hero. There was a project… the avengers initiative… earth’s mightiest- “ he wheezes. Even maw’s magic isn’t all powerful. “I dreamt… that i was going to be a hero. Together with captain america, i was going to save the earth. I was going to be ...brave. It was such a nice dream,” that awful smile, now back, is just another bruise, another bleeding gaping wound, and thanos recognizes it for what it is. 

“You were brave,” he says. “And you were strong. I do not seek to destroy the earth. I will save it. There is no need to be afraid.” 

“Will you?” that pathetic hope is back in Stark’s voice. “Will you really save them? Please. They don’t know any better.” 

“This is why I came,” Thanos assures. No, he reflects. They really do not know better, those puny, tiny creatures. They are violent, and cruel in their core, they take and take - from their planet, and from their great men. They do not deserve a hero like stark. And it is a pity, that in their undeserving blindness, the have unmade him from one. Have chosen him to be their villain. 

Thanos knows. He understands. When the people of titan descend on themselves like a plague, what he said happened. 

“You are not the only one cursed with knowledge.” 

“I used to think… my only curse was you.” 

Thanos accepts that with a bow of his head. “It’s enough,” he says. “You have done enough. You cannot fight anymore. You have been brave, and you are dying a hero. When i am done with this world, half of it will still be alive to remember you. I will make sure that they do.” 

He isn’t sure how much Stark is understanding at this point. Maw is looking more and more like keeping his lungs expanding is a struggle. 

“Are you sure?” Stark whispers. “Are you sure that I was enough?” 

“Yes.” 

Stark accepts it and takes a slow wheezing breath. “That thing you said… it was a nice thing you said. Please… just say it again. One last time. And then… then your child can stop. I am ready.” 

“You were brave?” Thanos says. He feels as though he is speaking to his little one. So young, and so painfully wise. 

“No, no… the other thing. Why you came - when you said - “ 

“I am here to save your world.” 

Stark wounds himself with another smile. “Agin.” 

“I promise that I will save your world.” 

“Thank you,” breathes the bravest man Thanos has ever seen. Maw lets his hands drop to his sides and bows his head. Proxima does too. 

Thanos stares into that ruined face, streaked with tears and blood, and thinks of a puny little human, whose lifespan is barely longer than a mosquito’s, standing alone against a universe he cannot hope to understand. A man, whose only wish had been to die peacefully among the stars. He had been that man once too, powerless to save his world, powerless to make them understand until he found his purpose. There had been no one for him, just like there was no one for Stark. But he was here now. He, Thanos was here. To save this world. To save everyone. And Stark had understood. In that final moment… Stark had understood. 

At once, a powerufl sense of urgency grips him. 

“Maw.” he says, voice tightly controlled. “Heal him.” 

His capable clever child takes his place next to the man in the beautiful funeral armor, and lifts his hands. It’s easier to heal someone fully than it is to keep them in a partially alive state. His father watches as he sets to work. 

“Are you certain this is a wise idea, father?” Proxima allows herself to question. She has always been a terribly curious thing. 

Thanos smiles. “Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've fucked about with the chapter titles, so hopefully, it should be easier to follow the timeline now: each chapter is titled with the POV character's name, and the word BEFORE - for all chapters set BEFORE the timestone was used, and the POV character's name + the word AFTER for all the chapters in the PRESENT, AFTER pepper, stephen, peter and rhodey collectively used the timeline. 
> 
> Hopefully this will make it easier to follow along. Pepper, Rhodey, Stephen and Peter are the only people who remember that the timeline was reset.


End file.
